To Rome with Love Reviews
Top CriticAllen's creative revival comes to a juddering halt with a foursome of would-be amusing vignettes that barely muster a laugh between them.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Once upon a time, calling a movie "lesser Woody Allen" might be considered a slap in the face. Now, it's more-or-less expected.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Allen's story moves along quite wonderfully, primarily because of his nuanced casting.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Most of the characters are archetypes, yet Allen treats them with genuine affection and avoids the bitterness that's marred much of his recent work.
Well, it's not "Midnight in Paris," but it's not "Whatever Works," either.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Alas, it's a love letter written on the fly, with brushstroke characters working their way through a cluster of sketchy, disconnected plotlines.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
A charming but terribly self-indulgent trifle that's less than the sum of its many parts.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Fans of Allen's magnificent earlier work can only look at this effort and feel their own brand of Ozymandias melancholia.
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| Original Score: 2/4
A film that sometimes comes off as an intersection of tangents, but it also gives rise to moments of joyous whimsy.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
The best thing that can said about the picture is that it's a pleasant time-waster that also doubles as a travelogue for anyone interested in visiting Italy.
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| Original Score: 2/4
To Rome with Love desperately needs a script polish, as well as an entire third act.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Allen seems to be aiming for the precise intersection of art and commerce where sophistication is implied, but nothing that takes place is ever obscure or challenging or revelatory.
Somewhere in here is a real movie, but it's hard to find in all the mess (which, despite everything, is actually funny from time to time).
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Allen probably makes too many movies. This one's OK. He'll make more.
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| Original Score: 2/4
[It] generates no particular excitement or surprise, but it provides the sort of pleasure [Allen] seems able to generate almost on demand.
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| Original Score: 3/4
If you're expecting another "Midnight in Paris" -- and you may well in the first moments of the new film -- you will be disappointed.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Woody Allen's new movie, To Rome with Love, is light and fast, with some of the sharpest dialogue and acting that he's put on the screen in years. The picture gently but surely moves back and forth between romantic comedy and satirical farce.
At times this multiple-plot meander through the glorious labyrinth of the Eternal City can feel aimless, even lazy. But in the film's best moments, that willingness to wander works to its advantage.
Not as creative as "Midnight in Paris," but it's a funny, quirky, frothy diversion.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
Even loyal fans have to admit this isn't so much a movie as four little one-page New Yorker stories, strung together with "Volare" and one-too-many shots of the Trevi fountain.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The comedy is passable, and the ways the stories play off each other provides enough to think about to be engaging.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
An affectionate but meandering comedy that contemplates romance, fame, legacy and longing.
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| Original Score: 3/5
It's often frivolous and banal, though never tedious. It does offer moments of buoyant humor, farcical fun and consistently gorgeous cinematography.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
What's on screen is a collection of clichés intermingled with outlandish farce or surreal fantasy.
To Rome with Love feels thin and lazy, another collection of familiar ensemble skits carelessly strung together in a cross-generational contemplation of the Big Issues that have plagued Allen's life and fed his art.
To Rome with Love is just froth - a romantic sampler with some decent jokes and gorgeous Roman backdrops.
To Rome With Love lacks the overarching theme of time and regret that distinguished Allen's last romantic comedy, but it has pleasures galore.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The results don't rank with his greatest triumphs, but there are enough laughs and watchable performances to make it all go down easy.
It's lazy, frivolous filmmaking -- To Rome With Love has about as much intent as a vacation -- but in spurts, gives real pleasure.
You never feel like you're anywhere except a mediocre New Yorker casual.
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| Original Score: 3/5
One of the most delightful things about "To Rome With Love" is how casually it blends the plausible and the surreal, and how unabashedly it revels in pure silliness.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
Woody Allen has become such a beguiling travel agent that he rolls through these stories with a relaxed effervescence that is rather infectious.
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| Original Score: B-
...a refreshing summer entertainment, not too sweet but not terribly bitter, and very picturesque besides.
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| Original Score: 4/5
It's time to pack up the Vuitton and come home, Woody. Your inspiration is thin, you're running out of euros, and you're having a bad day.
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| Original Score: 2/4
This Rome is luminous, and Allen, as in Manhattan, is great at imbuing his film with a strong sense of location.
It's not Nero who's fiddling, but Allen, bopping and dithering around the city like a tourist so desperate to cram in all the sights that he comes away only with a few crisp highlights and a lot of out-of-focus snapshots.
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| Original Score: 2/4
I was blissed out during much of To Rome With Love, but I have to acknowledge its creepy side.
This pleasantly diverting, none-too-strenuous arthouse excursion feels like a throwback to Allen's short-story anthologies, with the added pleasure of seeing a game cast play along.
Allen the writer-director has gone tone-deaf this time around, somehow not realizing that the nonstop prattling of the less than scintillating characters almost never rings true.
